Indicia reading terminals are available in multiple varieties. Well-known among the varieties is the gun style terminal as commonly seen at retail store checkout counters. Other terminals are also available that provide enhanced functions, have keyboards, and displays, and include advanced networking communication capabilities.
These terminals are useful to read and decode the information encoded in decodable indicia. Such decodable indicia are utilized generously, from encoding shipping and tracking information for packages to any number of forms and documents including, but not limited to, tax forms, order forms, transaction forms, survey forms, delivery forms, prescriptions, receipts, newspapers, product documents, reports, and the like. Moreover, while terminals and scanners are commonly used to decode the decodable indicia on these forms and documents, other devices may be used such as devices that can produce a digital version of the form and/or the document.
These devices typically utilize image sensors to decode information encoded in bar code symbols, and more particularly to process with bar code decoding algorithms captured images of the forms and documents. The availability of higher density image sensor arrays such as arrays that have ever increasing numbers of pixels, however, has increased the numbers of pixel values that must be processed to obtain the information coded in, e.g., the bar code symbology. Although the greater number of pixel values generally provides image representations of higher resolution, such resolution comes at the cost of processing speed.
There is a need for systems that include these terminals for processing documents that are operatively configured to identify content of the document in a highly reliable and accurate fashion without substantially sacrificing processing time.